5 Re‑Engagement Tactics for Reducing Churn

Kristine Lowery

Kristine Lowery

The key to monetizing an audience is retaining an audience. Or, to put another way, a loyal audience is a profitable audience. Bottom line: Once you get a subscriber, whether for an email newsletter or publication access, you don’t want her to churn away.

But according to Email Monks, the average lists decays by 25% per year. This happens through a range of reasons, some of which are controllable, such as sending repetitive or uninteresting content too often and some that are uncontrollable, such as email address changes. The critical metrics of declining open rates and frequency of site visits show when readers are losing interest and need to be prodded back into action.

Re-engagement messages will not only keep inactive users on your subscriber list but will also lure them back into the fold of frequent visitors. More importantly, re-engagement will also keeps inactive subscribers from hurting overall engagement rates. ISPs look to engagement as a filtering criteria, reclaiming accounts of inactive subscribers and converting those accounts to spam.

Tactics for Reducing Churn with Re-Engagement

Our guide, Increasing Repeat Visits, includes tactics publishers can implement that will help wake up “sleepy” subscribers. Simple tactics such as winback messaging have carry forward impact: 45% of recipients engage in subsequent emails. Tactics for reengaging presented in our guide include emailing readers with options to update their contact information and/or frequency preferences, and push notifications that remind lapsed users to engage.

We also cover more sophisticated ways to reduce churn via re-engagement, such as proactively reducing frequency for readers that haven’t opened an email in a set amount of time. Another advanced tactic is retargeting readers through other channels, such as Facebook.

Capitalizing on your brand identity to remind readers why they subscribed in the first place is a good way to win them back. Daily news email theSkimm, for example, stays true to its lighthearted image by featuring a tearful celebrity with the subtitle “We miss you” in its re engagement communication.

While not all of your inactive subscribers will re-engage, it is easier, and less expensive, to remind distracted readers that you exist than to market for new ones.